Senior Group Accountant

Job Title: Senior Group Accountant

Reporting to
: Chief Finance & Operations Officer (CFOO)

Salary budget: 1M-1.5M

Location
: Lagos, Nigeria Scope: Accounting oversight and group-wide coordination with subsidiaries (Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda)

Key partners
: French accounting firm (France bookkeeping), payroll firm (Silae), subsidiary finance teams, Financial Controller SSA, statutory auditors (France and group), banks,

Context of the role

Our client is a fast-growing climate-tech company selling PAYGo solar freezers across Sub-Saharan Africa, with a French parent entity. The group operates across multiple entities and currencies (EUR, USD, NGN, KES, UGX), with dense intercompany flows: France has historically financed part of the subsidiaries' purchases and payments, generating significant intercompany complexity that is now being restructured (centralization of payments in each entity, France → subsidiaries cash pooling, prioritization of USD flows).
France's bookkeeping is outsourced to the firm Afyneo, on a well-tooled setup (Dext for purchase and sales invoices, shared document management system for unstructured documents, monthly close with accounts available by the 15th of the month). This role is therefore not about posting the French entity's entries, but about being their technical guarantor and pilot, while directly owning the areas the firm does not cover: intercompany operations, consolidation, and cash.

Missions

1. France accounting — supervision and reliability

• Manage the relationship with the accounting firm: quality, completeness, and timeliness of production, critical review of the monthly accounts before distribution.

• Ensure the monthly closing schedule is met (complete elements sent to the firm by the 9th-10th of the month, accounts available by the 15th for investors).

• Supervise the invoicing workflows (sales invoice validation, purchase invoice collection, handling of specific cases: grants, financing, credit notes).

• Validate technical closing matters: cut-off (final customer delivery triggering revenue recognition), provisions, matching of costs and revenues, inventory valuation including spare parts.

• Prepare and secure the annual closing file; act as the auditors' counterpart alongside the firm, and coordinate team responses on inventory and logistics matters.

2. Intercompany operations

• Maintain and secure all intercompany positions across the group (France ↔ Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda): current accounts, intra-group invoicing, recharges, offsets.

• Produce intercompany reconciliations at each close, in the format required by the statutory auditors (reciprocity of balances on both sides), and drive exchanges with subsidiary teams until discrepancies are resolved.

• Document and enforce intercompany rules: identification of payments made on behalf of subsidiaries, current-account offsets validated by management, systematic invoicing behind every flow (including exceptional flows such as Western Union transfers).

• Contribute to the structural reduction of intercompany volume: shifting payments to the relevant entities, monitoring residual flows.

• Ensure intercompany consistency with the group's transfer pricing requirements, in liaison with tax advisors.

3. Consolidation

• Produce the group consolidation (monthly in management format, annually in statutory format): currency translation, intercompany eliminations, harmonization adjustments across local accounting frameworks.

• Secure the subsidiaries' reporting packages: calendar, formats, consistency checks, coordination of local counterparts.

• Document consolidation methods and options (scope, translation rates, treatment of exchange differences) and ensure their consistency from one financial year to the next.

• Produce consolidated statements for investors, lenders, and auditors, and answer their questions in the context of due diligence and covenant reporting.

4. Cash management

• Steer group treasury: daily/weekly positions by entity and currency, short-term cash forecasts, identification of subsidiaries' funding needs.

• Set up and run the France → subsidiaries cash pooling: sizing of amounts, funding frequency, monitoring and documentation of flows.

• Optimize banking and FX costs: centralization of flows in USD, choice of payment channels, reduction of international transfer fees and exchange losses.

• Supervise supplier payment runs (payment schedules, down payments to Chinese suppliers, priority arbitration with the CFOO) and customer collections.

• Keep the group debt schedule up to date (loan repayment schedules, repayable advances, order financing) and produce debt service elements for lend